1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to novelty clocks, and more particularly to clocks which display the time by changing patterns of discrete, independently movable mechanical elements that are not affixed to the mechanism. I refer to such elements as "counting tokens."
2. Prior Art
The most closely related prior device of which I am aware is an electric "ball clock." That device consists of three shallowly inclined chutes in which steel balls accumulate, a system of shallowly inclined feed chutes for delivering the balls to the accumulator chutes, a bottom container for storage of balls that have been discharged from the accumulator chutes, and a motor-driven elevator for delivering one ball per minute from the bottom container to the top of the feed-chute system.
In the ball clock the three chutes are arrayed generally one above the other. The lowest chute accepts up to twelve balls, each ball representing one hour. The middle chute accepts up to eleven balls, each ball representing five minutes, and the top chute accepts up to four balls, each ball representing one minute.
The balls supplied to the top of the feed-chute system are directed to the top chute (the "minute chute"), where they accumulate until the chute is full--that is, until it contains four balls. The next ball to arrive then causes the minute chute to tilt like a see-saw, spilling the previously contained four balls into a secondary chute system that returns them to the bottom container, while the fifth ball (that caused the tilting action) is returned to the feed-chute system for delivery to the center chute (the "five-minute chute").
The latter functions in a manner similar to that of the top chute, accepting the balls that are rejected by the minute chute (that is, every fifth ball supplied by the elevator)--until eleven balls have been accumulated, representing fifty-five minutes. The next "fifth ball" then tilts the five-minute chute, spilling the accumulated balls into the secondary return-chute system for return to the bottom container, while the rejected "fifth ball" or "hour ball" traverses the next section of the feed-chute system to the lowest chute (the "hour chute").
The hour chute functions in a manner similar to the first two, accumulating up to twelve balls. When a thirteenth ball arrives, the hour chute tilts to spill the twelve accumulated balls into the return-chute system--but in this case the thirteenth ball itself is not rejected but eventually rolls into the hour chute to represent "one o'clock."
The depth of each accumulator chute in the ball clock is roughly half the diameter of the balls, and the chutes are opaque. Displayed along the side of each chute that faces the user are numeric indicia that identify the number of minutes (up to four), five-minute counts, and hours represented by balls in the chutes. These indicia are clearly visible at all times. To read the time it is thus necessary to look to see what numeric indicium appears on the side of the chute below each most-recently-arrived ball, add the values thus identified for the top two chutes to obtain the number of minutes, and mentally invert the order of the minute total thus obtained relative to the hour indicium to obtain the time in the conventional (first hours, then minutes) format.
There is no indication of the number of seconds elapsed since the last minute ball was delivered, although the number of seconds can be very roughly inferred from the position of the elevator mechanism. It is also necessary to disregard all of the numeric indicia except those above which the last ball in each chute appears. These clocks are generally supplied in kit form and are relatively expensive. Some features of the ball clock are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,077,198.
Another device, somewhat related to my present invention although it is not within the field of novelty clocks at all, is a counting device, intended as a children's toy, marketed in Japan. This device has no motor, it being driven not on a time-related basis but rather by a hand crank operated by the user whenever the user desires. When the crank is operated, a disc-shaped counting token is carried by a belt system from a bottom container to top of the device, where the token falls into one of three straight vertical chutes. The first (rightmost) chute which is reached represents units ("ones"), the second (center) chute represents tens, and the third (leftmost) chute represents hundreds. Tokens delivered to the first chute fall into that chute unless that chute is full, in which case the tokens cannot fall into that first chute and so continue to be carried by the belt system across the top of the device to the next chute. In so passing they trip a mechanism which discharges the tokens from the first chute into the bottom container--essentially resetting the "units" column to zero. There is no provision for displaying a zero in any of the columns, however, so it is necessary to infer a zero in the tens or units column when reading the counter, and this can be confusing to a child user.
Similarly, tokens that pass the first chute fall into the second chute (the tens chute), unless that chute is full, in which case the tokens continue across the top of the device (discharging the tokens from the tens chute) to the hundreds chute. The latter chute is not an accumulator, but simply a return path to the bottom container; however, passage of a token through the hundreds chute actuates the device to wave a sign indicating that the count of one hundred has been reached.
This device has a transparent front panel on which are carried numeric indicia that are the same color as the back surfaces of the straight vertical chutes, while the counting tokens are a contrasting color; thus the indicia tend to blend visually into the background of the device except when tokens are accumulated in the chutes, making the indicia stand out against the contrasting tokens.
Because it is convenient to use circular tokens (to minimize the likelihood of the tokens' jamming at various points in the mechanism during operation), and because it is desirable to use tokens that have a certain minimum dimension in at least one direction (to provide a fairly substantial visual impact), the overall height of a device such as the Japanese counting toy must be at least a certain number of times that minimum dimension (that is, the diameter of each circular token). In the modern toy market that fact assumes significance in that it controls the amount of material that must be used, the amount of storage and display space required, and so forth. It is partially in response to such considerations that the ball clock discussed earlier is supplied as a kit; but this distribution approach in turn poses the disadvantage that user assembly is required, and even so the packaging for the unassembled kit is quite bulky.
My invention is directed to the provision of a clock mechanism that operates with counting tokens but in which the user need not (1) disregard numeric indicia for later times than the particular token pattern accumulated at any moment, (2) infer zeroes, (3) perform mental arithmetic or mental inversion of numeric indicia to determine the time, or (4) estimate the number of seconds elapsed since the last token came to rest. My invention is further directed to provision of a clock mechanism that is relatively compact and so relatively inexpensive in terms of materials, packaging, shipment, storage and display.
Primarily, however, my invention is directed to provision of a clock mechanism that presents an entirely new, unique, and captivating visual effect.